“My birthday is the one day of the year that we’re both most acutely aware of my illness. It’s the acknowledgement of the passage of time that does it. Another whole year of being sick, no hope for a cure on the horizon. Another year of missing all the normal teenagery things – learner’s permit, first kiss, prom, first heartbreak, first fender bender. Another year of my mom doing nothing but working and taking care of me.“

From School Library Journal (Courtesy of Amazon.com):

Gr 10 Up—From the first page, Madeline Whittier is a sympathetic character who has had to watch the world from the inside of a bubble—literally. Her diagnosed condition of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency is a life sentence that limits her to a world of two people: her mother, who is a doctor, and her nurse. Everything changes when Olly and his family move into the house next door. Olly is the kind of inventive guy who figures out a way to communicate with Madeline, and over the course of the next few months Madeline becomes Maddy, a young woman who takes potentially deadly risks to protect Olly emotionally, if not physically. Maddy’s and Olly’s hastily planned trip to Maui and their tastefully described liaison while there suggests a mature teen audience, but readers of Cammie McGovern’s Say What You Will (HarperCollins, 2014) and Wendy Mills’s Positively Beautiful (Bloomsbury, 2015) will fall in love with this humorously engaging story of a girl who discovers life, love, and forgiveness in new places. VERDICT Everything, Everything is wonderful, wonderful.—Jodeana Kruse, R. A. Long High School, Longview, WA

“Everything. This whole school. The team. Sometimes it seems like it’s all just fake. Like a pretend world. Like we’re something better than all the dregs. Isn’t that what Coach tells us? That we’re better than everybody else?”

It all started when Brett’s (aka Stick’s) teammates dropped raw eggs on a fellow classmate. It was just a guy Stick didn’t even know but it started him thinking about a lot of things – like the football team thinking they were better than everyone else – like his coach who was always yelling at them – like his Dad who drinks too much and only focuses on Stick’s mistakes on the field, not any of the good things he does. The team is headed for the state championship. Scouts are looking at Stick and he’s sure to get a college scholarship to play football and then eventually play in the NF. What does all this thinking do for Stick? He quits – quits the team and football – the game he has loved for so many years. Imagine his teammates reaction? Imagine his coach’s reaction? Imagine his Dad’s reaction? Now imagine an unlikely friendship with the kid who got the eggs dropped on him who also happens to be a superhero at night. You’ve got to read this book to see how it turns out? This is a story about being true to yourself. I loved it!

Chris Peeler

Hi!
I am the Media Specialist at Heather Ridge School in Frederick, Maryland and I love it! I graduated from Drexel University with a Masters in Library and Information Science. This blog was one of my assignments. The class is over now but the reading continues. Now I'm reading as many books as possible to share with my middle and high school students. I hope you enjoy reading about these books as much as I enjoyed reading them. Enjoy!